BeamNG.drive

FeltHat · Oct 11, 2016

beamng is lacking in other sectors of physics area where so called sims shine. Well u wouldnt be able to race with this level of physics anyway

Alistair McKinley · Oct 11, 2016

FeltHat said:
beamng is lacking in other sectors of physics area where so called sims shine. Well u wouldnt be able to race with this level of physics anyway

I totally agree!
In Assetto Corsa, for example, physics of ech car on track are being calculated --> that's very CPU demanding. If you add damage modelling like in BeamNG, AC would only run on high-end PCs.
I'd also like to see a visual more appealing damage model in current racing sims but only as long as it doesn't affect performance too much.

Fat-Alfie · Oct 12, 2016

All I saw in the video was the faceted tyre bouncing up and down as each vert touched the ground. Still no circular wheels??

Paul Jeffrey · Apr 15, 2017

The often overlooked BeamNG: Drive has today received a sizable new update, bringing the game to build 0.9 and adding lots of new stuff...

Not everyone will be familiar with this title, as it has seemingly fallen under the radar of many race and driving fans since hitting Steam Greenlight back in 2015. Basically the title is a unique driving game where you can using a wide variety of weird and wonderful vehicles across large and varied landscapes and tracks. One of the biggest selling points to the title is the incredible damage model employed within the game engine, very much putting Beam NG Drive at the top of the pile for damage physics simulation. With unique scenarios available to play out to make the most of the soft body damage simulation, this is a game that you could spend literally hours on just crashing in imaginative ways...

Although not yet at a full version one release state, the game is available through Steam for PC gamers and when they update it, boy do they do a good job! Today's update is massive, and you can read all about it, plus re watch the Early Access trailer below:

Build 0.9 Change Log:

Highlights

Added new vehicle – Ibishu Hopper (more mod parts and variants coming in the next update)
Improved tires and suspension for some cars (more coming)
Added D-Series Crew Cab
Added vehicle damage save/load
Significant physics core optimizations (more than 30% faster) and improvements (see here for more details)
Friction improvements
Improved controller mapping system

Physics

Physics core is more than 30% faster
Improved stability of heavy object collisions (carrying heavy rocks case)
Improved inter-vehicle collisions, anti-sticking works now for both front and back triangle faces. Adjustments might be needed for vehicle mods with misplaced nodes
Improved accuracy of friction
Added slidingFrictionCoef node property that acts like a multiplier only on the sliding friction of a node
Added “stribeckExponent” and “stribeckVelMult” to node properties. It allows finer control of the sliding friction curve
Improved accuracy of static collisions
Static collision subsystem filters out degenerate (zero area) triangles. This fixes static collision clipping problems with collision meshes containing degenerate triangles
Fixed instability with high lift coefficients in water
Increased accuracy of wheel/rotator angular velocity calculations, they are accurate now even for “heavy” use cases that require high precision
Rewrote mud/sand subsystem to use the same information as aerodynamics (in a non-newtonian fluid medium). It is more accurate now, but groundmodels will need to be adjusted
Added “shearStrength” groundmodel coefficient. It defines the force (per area) that needs to be applied for the ground to start yielding
Improved aerodynamic lift and drag curves
Added airfoil lift curve approximation to triangle’ aerodynamics simulation (using lift and stallAngle triangle properties)
Added “stallAngle” property to triangles. It defines (in radians) the angle where the lift will begin to stall
Bananabench works again, it tests now up to 20 vehicles

Tyre Physics
Node friction load sensitivity (WIP-Not all tires yet):

Load sensitivity node properties are “noLoadCoef”, “fullLoadCoef” and “loadSensitivitySlope”
Tire’s overall grip is reduced with increased load
Lightly loaded tires have comparably more traction. This means less inside wheel spin with throttle in corners.
The cars behavior and balance at the limit is more progressive, cars do not “tank slap” as much when trying to recover from a slide
Cars can brake/accelerate with some 5-10% more force than they corner, because the wheelbase is longer than track, weight transfer reduces grip less in the longitudinal direction.
Camber affects maximum grip in a more accurate way, because loading the outside tire nodes excessively, reduces grip due to load sensitivity.
Vehicles, especially tall ones, are less likely to roll after hitting curbs or off camber situations, because the extreme camber reduces the grip through load sensitivity on the outside tire nodes.

Rolling resistance reduction

Rolling resistance reduced another 10-30% by improving the node to ground collision code
Increased aero drag to compensate for reduced rolling resistance

Tire “softness” friction property

Nodes have a new “softnessCoef” property, which changes the rubber’s hysteretic behavior. This allows them to be more sticky in transient situations. When used in wheels, this improves steering response and makes the tire less likely to be shocked loose from the road by sudden input or a bump etc. It can also reduce loss of grip at high speeds (250+km/h) to a basically negligible amount.

Tire “treadCoef” + ground model “roughness” friction properties

Tires have a tread coefficient that represents how well treaded the tire is (Slick = 0, mud tire = 1) we multiply this against a roughness coefficient in each ground type (mud has a high roughness, asphalt has very little) this means that a mud tire now works well in mud but mediocre on pavement, a slick works well on pavement but horribly on mud. Similar for other ground models.
Choosing the correct tire for the surface is more important now, as off road tires will perform well off road but not so much on asphalt, and slicks will be great on asphalt but practically useless in mud.

Gameplay

Time refactor: sim/real time
Improving pitching of orbit camera when looking from the front
When orbit camera is manually rotated, it tries to remain locked at that position
Improved tiremarks render simulation, they now take into account wheel angle
Greatly reduced lag when meshes break in heavy collisions
Slowmotion physics speed can now be instantly modified while game is paused
Added new quickraces, raising the total number of quickrace tracks to 46
Steam trading cards are nearly finished: we need to fix some minor issues, then they should start dropping
Added fancy graph to Controls menu, displaying the effect of each option in real time
Added Sony DualShock 4 Slim inputmap
Added Speedlink Phantom Hawk flight stick inputmap
Added Thrustmaster TH8A Shifter inputmap
Updated all inputmaps to use default parking brake rather than permanent brake
Added sane limits to the linearity
Increased granularity of deadzone setting
Simplified configuration of binding deadzone, now only one value is needed
Input system is now shielded against possibly incorrect deadzone values
Fixed bug in XInput system, the controller type is now correctly recognized (although it is ignored for now)
Force Feedback: Added optional force cutoff at low speed. This will help remove vibrations in setups with powerful steering wheels and computers with low framerates
Force Feedback: Fixed the parsing of header lines in LUT and CSV response curve files
Force Feedback: Fixed LUT files aggravating the nonlinear response of motors, rather than fixing it (due to all their values typically being inverted)
Improved node grab

AI

New speed planning and targeting:
Handles all plan segments as circular segments.
Calculates speeds on segments through analytic forms.
Places target along planned path at a distance from the vehicle proportional to the vehicle’s speed.
Added anti slip control. Models a drivers reaction to wheel slip under excessive brake or throttle application.
Simple AI crash detection. AI detects a crash and engages in maneuvers to get out of it.
Added AI span mode. Produces paths biased towards the part of the map that has not been yet traversed.
Added a drivability attribute to the edges of the graph representation of a map’s road network. It allows for the user specification of the part of the map to be spanned.
Added options for the user specification of the route speed (limit/set) in the AI manual mode API.
Bug fixes to the AI random pathfinder.
Merge overlapping edges (forming triangles) of AI roads (navigation map) in map.lua.
Corrected drivability values of various road segments in East Coast USA (mainly dirt roads that had unit drivability).

Terrain

East Coast USA: some minor roadmarking changes, changed zebra crossings from being mesh based to using a decalroad
Jungle Rock Island: Fixed a collision problem with one of the tunnels, added some clearings and small details
Rain objects: added to Industrial and Small Island
Utah: fixed tunnel entrance model issues
Hirochi Raceway: fixed the sand to behave like a sandtrap rather than beach sand
Various miscellaneous fixes
Added spawnpoints to Gridmap
Dry Rock Island moved to Mod Repository : https://www.beamng.com/resources/dry-rock-island.1863/

UI

Added SimplePowertrainControl App
Added SimpleBrakeThermals App
Added electronic display to ETK 800 gauges
Added AdvancedWheelDebug App
Custom endscreen for quickrace, showing the lap times and highscores
Remade the quickrace previews to have the same style
Added local best times for the quickrace. Best times can be hovered to view, and clicked to select the used vehicle
Clone vehicle button in vehicle selector
Improved support for vehicle html textures: better interfaces createWebView, queueWebViewJS, UI logs will have an identifier now
New startup: short intro screen
Improved window position saving: will restore position, snapping, maximized correctly now
UI streams work smoothly in slow motion
Powertrain app can switch between Power(previous visualization) and Torque (click on “Torque” to switch). Torque visualization is default now
Fixed powertrain app bug that overlapped wheels/rotators (large roller case)
Added subtle animations to Powertrain app

Reply

Pause and bullet time hotkeys now work during replays too (specially useful in conjunction with Alt+U to hide UI)
New replays can now also be recorded pressing ALT+R
Slightly improved smoothness in slow motion and in computers where the framerate is not perfectly stable
Added support to load replay files from a different level than current one
Replay system will now restore most of the world to the state it was in before loading the current replay file
Fixed incorrect playback of vehicle materials (such as broken windows, dashboard lights, etc)
Fixed broken beams not being properly recorded (e.g. wheels that fell off)
Fixed small memory leak during long play sessions
Fixed most cases of replay freezing for tens of seconds when big amounts of skidmarks where recorded
Fixed tiremarks being recorded with very low frequency and not always being played back
Replays recorded in extremely slow computers will now play back at the correct speed
Bumped replay version: files recorded with previous versions will no longer be readable (this will continue happening until the replay system is stable enough)

Vehicles - Lua

Added new vehicle: Ibishu Hopper (more mod parts and variants coming in the next update)
LeGran: Added trunk spoiler/luggage rack for Sport model and landau roof for Luxe model
200BX: New suspension geometry and alignment, aero tuning, reduced power of stage 1 turbo, removed wing from “Drift” config to improve predictability, added wing to “Demon” config, made ‘Nomi’ and ‘BlastR’ skin colorable, added ‘TuningStudio’ skin
Barstow: Added ‘Front Guard’ part
Bolide: Aero tuning, suspension tuning and alignment, 390GTR uses sport tires, more engine inertia, less exhaust smoke
Burnside: Added ‘Eye Lids’ part
ETKI: added ‘Knallhart’ variant, added ‘Rotopad’ skin
Sunburst: New suspension geometry and alignment adapted from accurate sources, aero tuning
ETK800/ETK-K: New suspension geometry and alignment adapted from accurate sources, suspension strengthening, aero tuning, added engine efficiency table
SBR4: New suspension geometry and alignment, suspension strengthening, aero tuning
D-Series: Added new crew cab variants with longer frame, added rectangular roof lights part, fixed front axle torque reactions, fixed some discrepancies between D and H series frames, added engine efficiency table
H-Series: Added ‘Roof Parts’, ‘BeamCom’ configuration, ‘BeamCom’ skin, added rectangular roof lights part, fixed front axle torque reactions, fixed some discrepancies between D and H series frames, added engine efficiency table
T-Series: Deformation and strength tuning of Dump Bed Upfit, fixed some problems with fuel tanks
Pigeon: Speedometer now ignores stabilizer wheels speed
Miramar: Fixed door glass breakgroup, reduced weight of race rear axle
Legran: Improved race suspension, added tuneable rear alignment settings
Added new Okudai RP02 wheel in many sizes
Lightbars: Cleanup, Improved ‘ETK800 Lightbar’ model, added flares, improved materials, implemented custom lightbar patterns
New prop: Ball
Revamped tire tuning: 200BX, Bolide, ETK800, ETK-K, Hopper, SBR4, Semi and Semi Trailers, Sunburst, all off-road tires
Increased steering stiffness on all cars for better response
Vehicle lift and drag scaling tuned to suit aero physics changes
Added fuel tank leak beam to all tanks, now fuel level will drop when tank is broken
Removed beam highlights in fuel tanks and roll cages, people mistook them for broken beams
Tweaked asphalt ground model to better suit new tire model work
Added roughness and treadCoef to groundmodels and tires (now dirt tires work better in dirt, race tires work better on asphalt etc)
Tuned mud and sand ground models with shearStrength and roughness, now deep mud and sand are much more difficult to traverse without good ride height and off road tires.
Fixed automatic and CVT transmissions sapping power in reverse
Added electricServo powertrain device, can act directly on wheels and rotators to control angle
Fixed engine thermals bug where starting a stalled engine would heat it up
Fixed DCT-Transmission failing to load sometimes
Added user setting for disabling the shift prevention of automated transmissions
Post-Crash-Brake now disables itself after being triggered a few times (circumvents issues with excessive skeleton vibrations triggering it)
Gearbox behavior now persists across reloads
Fixed some issues with bool values in props
Fixed issue where TC would not recognize the correct number of propulsed wheels
Clutches now default to closed if not controlled via electrics
Fixed issue where dT wasn’t correctly passed to controller physics updates
Fixed issue where a forced dummy controller wasn’t properly referenced as the main controller of a vehicle
Included ESC stiffness calibration app in public release
Reworked brake code, now with new and much better ABS
Improved turbocharger input value safe guarding
Fixed a bug where wheels without tires would use a wrong wheel radius for wheel speed measurement
Engine stall state is now part of the streams being sent to the UI
Reworked all turbos to have a much more realistic response
Fixed auto shift point calculations
ETK800/K now shift faster
Fixed DCT going into non existing gears
Automatic transmissions now look at the torque converter output speed for shift decisions
H-shifter usage now switches to realistic gearbox behavior
Reworked rotators so they can be individually braked
ESC is now an actual powertrain controller
Cleaned up UI app categories
Gear damage is a bit more forgiving in regards to using to clutch
Increased clutch smoothing rate for keys
Implemented ETK800 digital gauge logic
Implemented “powersteering” prototype, not used by default
Fixed bug where radiator damage appeared even if no radiator was installed
Added electrics value/”simplefunction” for 4wd and rangebox status
Fixed air cooled engines throwing errors about a missing radiator
Added a prototype “drift mode” to the sunburst ESC
Improved partial throttle turbo response
Broken fueltanks now slowly drain (no visuals)
Reworked large spinner and large roller to use the powertrain and controller features
Added engine load display to simple engine debug app
Reworked shaft inertia calculation to support rotating objects (wheels, etc) in any orientation
Implemented ability to manually turn off the engine in arcade mode
Added hazard signals to post crash brake
ESC/TC mode now persists across vehicle reloads
Added standalone “airplane surface controller” that can be used by mods to easily control airplane surfaces
Fixed engine load not working properly when idling
Fuel displays now show an empty state when no tank is installed
Fixed torque converter lockup looking at engine rpm instead of gearbox input rpm
Improved turbocharger BOV logic
Node debug modes now show the actual current mass, not the initial mass from jbeam
Fuel starved engines can now be restarted if they have been refueled.
Made it possible to replace an already loaded mainController with a custom controller
Added ability to have custom turbo, supercharger and thermals code for the combustion engine
Powertrain now calculates the cumulative gear ratio across the whole tree
Implemented ETK800 Gauge screen logic
Added ability to manually turn an engine off from Lua
Fixed scenario freezer not working with vehicles without an engine
Added electrics source for radiator fans

Audio

FMOD: Switched from OpenAL to FMOD as sound backend. No new sounds yet, however, the new system will allow us a lot better integration

Scenarios

Added ‘Hopping Around’ scenario
Added ‘Dirt Hopper’ scenario
Added ‘Climbing Utah’ scenario
Added ‘Canyon Jump’ scenario
Added ‘Guinea Pig Preparations’ scenario
Added ‘East Coast Chase 3’ scenario
Added ‘East Coast Chase 4’ scenario

Misc

Game objects serialization in JSON : json exporter for levels, improved exporter to have order now, minimal format: leaving out default values
Improved internationalization: fixed UI switching problems, better operating system language detection, improved support for non-ASCII characters throughout the game. Help translating BeamNG.drive here
Made JSON parser compatible with SJSON (it allows JSON keys without quotes and “=” instead of “:”)
Ported lots of old TS code to Lua, work in progress
Added temporalSpring smoother to utils.lua module
Added an easy to use library for using HTML-Textures from vehicle Lua
Auto performance testing now runs in fast forward mode
Fixed auto performance tests not working with vehicles in the mod folder
Auto performance tests now use low range and 4wd if available

General Bugfixes

Fixed infrequent render crashes
Fixed infrequent invalid render states
Fixed crash on UI when the game is running in background for some time
Optimized broken flexmeshes.
Fixed bug in color palette shader causing black artifacts
Fixed missing crash reports in support tickets
Added support for per level Lua extensions
Added Lua module dependencies which inform the game of which modules a module depends on and enforces processing order. A module is processed after all it’s dependencies.
Only modules needed per game mode are loaded now.
Greatly improved browsing speed of meshes in the game editor, it should be several times faster now
Optimized file system search algorithm. Computers with slow disks will benefit the most from this
Optimized iteration of directories with large amounts of files inside, and fixed crashes due to a memory leak in extreme cases
Exposed new Lua function “castRay”, which can be used in the game engine thread to detect obstacles (will impact performance, use with caution)
Fixed rare crash of camera code when no vehicle is present
Fixed rare crashes when spawning or removing vehicles
Logging fixes: fixed missing log lines, crashes
Filesystem fixes: some API’s were not working correctly, using findfiles now instead of walking directories
fixed lots of potential problems using static analysis
Improved backward compatibility for windows 7
Fixed memory corruption in forest file
Start unifying the file names: filename.contenttype.formattype. I.e. main.level.json
Improved nodegrab legend
Fixed UI crashes, corrupt log files, etc
Greatly reduced memory allocations in human readable file size string representation API

Some Stats

33 people from all over the world worked on this update
3742 changes since last update, averaging around 47 changes per working day

Instructions on how to update the game here.
Bug reporting/Help Thread here.

Beam NG: Drive is available exclusively for PC now.

Check out the Sim Racing Games sub forums here at RaceDepartment for all the news and discussion around a wide selection of racing and driving games for PC and console. Join in the conversation today!

Have you tried the latest Beam NG: Drive update yet? Would you recommend the game to a friend? What modes do you most play in the game? Let us know in the comments section below!

JoelRR · Apr 15, 2017

That's a massive update! Almost a Gb... This game only needs VR support

Paul Jeffrey said:
Have you tried the latest Beam NG: Drive update yet? Would you recommend the game to a friend? What modes do you most play in the game? Let us know in the comments section below!

And as a reply for above, it's a fun game (even with out any mods), not a Hardcore Racing Simulator but a very nice Car Destruction Simulator (even better than AC's public lobbies!!

).

If you had the chance, give it a try, there's even a free demo out there.

Dovi design · Apr 15, 2017

Damn, that's one hell of an update list

Joseph Wright · Apr 15, 2017

Right then, I think its time I crack out Beam again, and do some crashing. Lets go!

A3DR · Apr 15, 2017

Checking it out right now, interesting to see how they've improved the "sticky" polygons issue. This game came a long way since it started, amazing how they keep improving something that's already very good.

shimon.ifraimov · Apr 15, 2017

FMOD: Switched from OpenAL to FMOD as sound backend. No new sounds yet, however, the new system will allow us a lot better integration

thank god finally

FeltHat · Apr 15, 2017

finally! almost half a year since last update

guys, try rally in this thing, its beyond hardcore

schlitty · Apr 15, 2017

For those who have it; How is FFB and general wheel feel in this game?

Deleted member 217114 · Apr 15, 2017

schlitty said:
For those who have it; How is FFB and general wheel feel in this game?

I am wondering too. Might use it for Rally then.

Nick Hill · Apr 15, 2017

I have *not* tried the latest update, but I have had BeamNG in my library since early days. My assessment:
- Mesmerising crash physics
- Capable of overloading even very fast CPU/GPU combos
- Driving physics are poorly suited to consider this as a bona fide option as a "racing game/sim"

That said, my son (who is about to turn 8), has played it for hours upon hours and absolutely loves it. He watches gameplay videos of wacky crash scenarios on YouTube and then tries (and, impressively, often succeeds) in replicating them in the game himself.

FeltHat · Apr 15, 2017

yea, while physics wise its worse than current top stuff, thrill when eg. rallying comes from fact that u absolutely cannot crash into anything- even lil stone could mean total annihilation

melanieuk · Apr 16, 2017

BeamNG vs Real Life

JPL083 · Apr 16, 2017

FeltHat said:
yea, while physics wise its worse than current top stuff, thrill when eg. rallying comes from fact that u absolutely cannot crash into anything- even lil stone could mean total annihilation

Little stone can do lots of damage...